Miscellaneous Books and Magazines
I have growing number of books in my library that don’t really fit into a nice category, yet they are still related to the topics we cover here.
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Title: Beautiful Wounds: A Search for Solace and Light in Washington’s Channeled Scablands by Timothy Connor
ISBN: 978-1682686805
Review: This is a beautiful coffee table style book that perfectly shows the intricacy’s of an are the I love, the channeled scablands of Washington. This is the most accurate visual depiction of the region that I have ever seen.
Title: Humboldt’s Travels in Siberia 1837-1842 by John Sinkankas
ISBN: 978-0945005179
Review: This is the fascinating account of three German scientists who traveled 9700 miles into the far reaches of Siberia in 1829 on a rock and mineral hunting expedition at the request of Tar Nicholas I.
Title: Rocks & Minerals Washington State Issue July/August 1991 (Vol. 66, No. 4)
ISBN: N/A
Review: If you are a serious collector of Washington State rocks and minerals than you will want to locate a copy of the this magazine, its amazing! It has articles by a number of well known collectors and authors such as Lanny Ream, Rudy Tschernich, Raymond Lasmanis and many more. It has articles about collecting in the Wenatchee National Forest, Washington Mineral Index, Autunite Localities of NE Washington, Zeolites of Washington, Petrified Wood from Washington and Collecting Sites for Agate in Washington State. Some of the information and locations mentioned in the magazine are note found anywhere else to the best of my knowledge.
Title: Rock Treasures of Oregon by Hans Gamma
ISBN: N/A
Review: This book is truly a beautiful work of art. I would say that this would qualify as a coffee table book since its mostly just photos of different material that can be found in Oregon but it is presented in a beautiful way and it is also really nice to have the common names and photos for all these different types of material found in Oregon. I hope to add the rest Hans Gammas books to my collection someday.
Mineral Digest
The Journal of Mineralogy
Mineral Digest The Journal of Mineralogy published 8 volumes in the 1970s but most of the actual books have no publish dates. The first reference to the printing comes in volume 2 when they said it was published quarterly and then in volume 4 they list the publish date as “Winter 1972”, I will use this reference point in volume 4 to date the issues.
It’s important to point out that many of these books had poor glue used in the binding of them which has resulted some pages and covers coming loose, this seems to be a well known issue with the printing of them.
Each digest contains a handful of very well written in depth articles by well known (at the time) authors and experts. Every issue is print in full color on high gloss paper which in a way almost makes them more like a small coffee table book than a magazine digest.
Title: Mineral Digest The Journal of Mineralogy Vol. 1 Summer 1972
ISBN: N/A
Review: This first volume was an excellent read and contained articles from John Sinkankas and Frederick Pough and many more but those were the two who stood out to me. It had a number of really great articles that I enjoyed reading such as Minerals on Postage Stamps, Color in Minerals The secret of Nature’s palette and Quartz A Mineral Digest classes condensation. All of these articles were accompanied by beautiful photos and lovely 1970s style layout. The articles walked a fine line between the technical and writing for the layperson.
Title: Mineral Digest The Journal of Mineralogy Vol. 2 Fall 1972
ISBN: N/A
Review: Similar to volume one, this volume had a number of articles written by some very well know and respected writers. The two articles that stood out the most to me were Moon Rock by John Sinkankas and Minerals from Tsumb by Jay Wollin. The Moon Rocks article was interesting to me since the field of selenology is so advanced these days but back in the time that this digest was released we were just in the process of retrieving and disturbing the lunar samples from the Apollo program so to see beautiful thin sections of lunar samples must have been amazing at the time. I would say this is worth adding to library as it truly captures an interesting time in the world of mineralogy.
Title: Mineral Digest The Journal of Mineralogy Vol. 3 Winter 1972
ISBN: N/A
Review: I would say this issue was acceptable but fell a little short of my expectation after reading the first two which were very well written with excellent subjects to discuss and event the photos were lacking. I think if it was the winter of 1972 and I received this in the mail I’m not sure I would continue buying these.
Title: Mineral Digest The Journal of Mineralogy Vol. 4 Spring 1973
ISBN: N/A
Review: This volume contained a number of very well written and interesting articles, from the 601 carrot Lesotho diamond to Great Jewel Robberies: Thieves, Time & Places it had a lot of really well written articles. These books are a time capsule sorts, you get to look back on what people found interesting in the world of minerals at the time and touch on topics I have never thought about before such as the article Minerals in Advertising.